News Roundup: Black Women Do Bike

Bike lanes will be replaced 1-for-1 in the new tunnel. (Bruce Englehardt)

• Gothamist schooled New Jersey car commuter Whoopie Goldberg on bike lanes, safety, and entitlement. She later walked back her series of rants against NYC bike lanes, sort of.
• Phyllis Porter, advocate for safe streets and building more family-sized affordable housing, and founder of the local chapter of Black Girls Do Bike, is jumping into the race for Bruce Harrell's open seat.
• Cutting 3 minutes from First Hill Streetcar trips costs no more than $75,000, but - guess what - "local business owners and property owners pushed back." It would be great to know which businesses on Capitol Hill don't like fast transit. But CHS reports the plan is not yet dead.
• Mountlake Terrace Station open house report.
• ECB is not impressed that Alex Pedersen, a candidate for Rob Johnson's open seat, has deleted his social media posts opposing ST3, bike lanes, and HALA.
• West Seattle Blog covers the daily Highway 99 closure multi-agency media conferences consistently. The tunnel opening is still on track for February 4, but the northbound exit into downtown on Dearborn will open at least a week later. Laura Newborn of WSDOT warns drivers not to return to their pre-shutdown routine:

If 90,000 drivers decide to get back in their cars, there's no question that things will get worse quickly - don't do it!

• In case you missed last week's thread, you will be riding or driving on styrofoam for the aforementioned off-ramp.
• No One Could Have Predicted that 90,000 cars could simply disappear from the roads ($).
• In case you needed one more reason not to drive downtown, two polls four years apart suggest aggressive driving is on the rise. Just drivers were asked, and the pollsters depended on the drivers to rat themselves out. Maybe this is the sort of "alternative science" some in the Legislature are pushing. (See Futurewise link below.)
• Microapartments are in demand ($), beyond the comprehension of NIMBYs.
• Using bad zoning to overcome problems caused by bad zoning.
• Exit polling by environmental groups shows strong support for climate legislation of some sort.
• County Councilmember Dave Upthegrove will introduce legislation to prohibit new fossil fuel infrastructure. Of couse, that doesn't stop the bleeding of emissions by current infrastructure. Nor does it ban new car sales.
• Zoning is one impediment to easily building affordable housing.
• Ferry Ridership is up.
• Futurewise is watching land-use bills. They are not impressed that Senate Bill 5195 pits housing against other capital improvements, without growing the pie.
• Bike lockers coming to UW Station.
• Legislation for high speed rail.
• TOD at Kingsgate.
• "Years ago, I didn't have to be so up on bus schedules. But no one is renting cars. When they think of Seattle, they think of public transportation." ($)
• Kevin Desmond pitches BRT in North Vancouver.
• C-Tran board chair not in love with light rail.
• Paris will extend free transit to children under 11 and those with qualifying disabilities under 20.

This is an open thread.